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Kelly Jarvis: Beauty and the Beast as an Economic Story · Romancing the Threshold

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: There is a turn that happens this time of year.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: The light goes early,
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: the air picks up an edge, and something in us reaches for the older stories.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: The ones with forests in them.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: The ones that were spoken out loud long before anybody thought to write them down.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I feel it every autumn, my favorite time of the year.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And as the season changes and the days get shorter,
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I notice myself reaching for these types of stories,
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: the reimaginings of old fairy tales, of folklore and mythology.
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  SPEAKER_00: And thankfully, I'm finding them everywhere.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you haven't been anywhere near a romance shelf lately, you already know this.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Half of the books on them have fairy tales as its bones.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: The curse,
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: the bargain,
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: the door you were told not to open,
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: which of course means somebody's going to open it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: A beast who turns out to be the safest room in the house.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: These are retellings stacked on retellings and more arriving every season.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: My way of reading stories is for what moves underneath them,
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: what the psyche is working out in the dark of a tale.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Why one story grabs a six-year-old and refuses to let go for the next 40 years.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's my door into all of this, and I love that door.
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  SPEAKER_00: But there is another room, one that I'm not very familiar with.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: This room is about where the tales actually came from.
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  SPEAKER_00: How they've traveled, how many virgins are out there, who changed what and why.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: How a story that once belonged to everyone at the fire ended up shelved
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: under children's literature.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: That room has an occupant and I'm lucky enough to know her.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Kelly Jarvis teaches fairy tales and folklore.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: She also wrote Sea and Stars,
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  SPEAKER_00: a Beauty and the Beast retelling, and one of my favorite books of this year.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that combination is exactly what I wanted.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: She knows where these stories come from, and she also has gone and built something out of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: The scholar and the maker
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: in the same person.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: She's also my first returning guest, the first person to come back to this podcast threshold.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love to have her back a third time without blinking.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: What she brought was more than her knowledge.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is a new perspective on how to see both fairy tales and romance.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about historical dates,
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  SPEAKER_00: first romance novels,
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  SPEAKER_00: fairy tale variants,
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  SPEAKER_00: and a few things that I had believed my whole life that turned out to be much newer
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: than I assumed.
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  SPEAKER_00: And near the end,
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  SPEAKER_00: she offered an image on how stories work that it has made me admire even more a word
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: that I have often used in my work.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: This new angle she offered me has really opened up this image
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm sure you will appreciate it too.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: One housekeeping note before we go.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: So Kelly, how are you doing?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm good.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me back on Romancing the Threshold.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you returning champion, you.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I love it here.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think...
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: From our last conversation and our exchanges between then and now,
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like there's always so much to talk about with you that I was very excited
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: when I woke up this morning.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, my God, I get to talk to Kelly again.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we could talk for hours.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
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  SPEAKER_00: We need that portal, Kelly.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: We need that portal.
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  SPEAKER_00: And whenever I do cross that portal or you cross over here,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be sure to have flawed made for you.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds delicious.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I would like.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's really the only dessert I know how to make and I make a good one.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: So since the last time we talked, we got to talk about Almas so much.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things we touched on was your book, which I'm totally plugging it in again.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's awesome.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to fall in love with James and not a bellow.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: When we closed that recording,
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  SPEAKER_00: we thought about your book,
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: just to go back, kind of inspired on Beauty and the Beast.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now I thought with the weather changing and thinking about fairy tales,
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  SPEAKER_00: which I think I see there's a strong link with romance.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, who best to have as a guest than you who teaches this stuff?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: To talk to us about fairy tales and romance.
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  SPEAKER_01: Something very comforting and cozy about fairy tales and romance and returning to
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: that as the weather starts to get cold and dark.
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  SPEAKER_00: I know, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Something like hot chocolate tea, a little blanket and just read a good fairy tale romance.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's just lovely.
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  SPEAKER_00: My first question, just jumping in here, is...
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  SPEAKER_00: As a reader, I see romance and fairy tale like kind of sharing a road together.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if we think of their relationship as a romance itself,
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  SPEAKER_00: where do you think they had their meet cute and where did they part ways?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love the way you frame that as a meet cute.
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  SPEAKER_01: We're really using lexicon of romance novels there.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think that romance and fairy tale are definitely sharing a road in our mindset
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  SPEAKER_01: because they're both containers for storytelling.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think that storytelling is the thing that makes us human.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's the thing that we do to connect with one another, to understand one another.
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  SPEAKER_01: So they're always going to have that shared continuity between them.
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  SPEAKER_01: Historically, though,
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  SPEAKER_01: they're very different types of containers because fairy tales,
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  SPEAKER_01: certainly those fairy tales which stem from oral circulation.
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  SPEAKER_01: Are a part of the collective container or the collective mind.
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  SPEAKER_01: They spring from the folk and there's no one original version of any fairy tale.
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  SPEAKER_01: They exist in variant form.
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  SPEAKER_01: Whereas romance is a genre that has developed within literary study
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  SPEAKER_01: and it is comprised of a bunch of individual writers
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  SPEAKER_01: who are approaching different texts and putting their own spins on them.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I think we definitely see where they come together
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  SPEAKER_01: as we're reading individual romances,
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  SPEAKER_01: but they come from different places originally.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: And...
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that's really interesting because when I think of fairy tales
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  SPEAKER_00: and how I have worked with fairy tales through counseling clients and mythology
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  SPEAKER_00: as well, I see fairy tales as tapping into something.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's the collective because I think they tap into an archetypal element
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  SPEAKER_00: that that's why you have Beauty and the Beast stories around the world, right?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really live wire for me about fairy tales.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're so alive no matter what age we're in.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's something about a fairy tale that transcends our human experience.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think that they're very transcendent.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think when romance novels or really any form of literature,
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  SPEAKER_01: because I would argue all literature is informed by folklore and fairy tale is Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: So what do you think romance has inherited from fairy tales?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think in its origins,
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  SPEAKER_01: romance and fairy tale did kind of linger because romances,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: if you go all the way back to first use of romance,
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  SPEAKER_01: we're talking about those medieval romances that circulated directly.
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  SPEAKER_01: During 12th century France, the word romance was applied to those stories.
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  SPEAKER_01: And those weren't romance stories in the way that we think of romance stories today.
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  SPEAKER_01: They were more folkloric stories that focused on legendary knights.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think association does tend to stay a little bit.
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  SPEAKER_01: Fairy tales are also stories that are understood on the basis of their plot structures.
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  SPEAKER_01: Fairy tales are categorized under something that scholars call the ATU Index.
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  SPEAKER_01: It stands for the Arne Thompson Uther Index.
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  SPEAKER_01: And every fairy tale is given a number based on its characters and its plot structure.
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  SPEAKER_01: So Beauty and the Beast is given the number ATU425C and like stories from around
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  SPEAKER_01: the world,
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  SPEAKER_01: which feature a questing heroine and a beastly entity are put into
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  SPEAKER_01: that particular category.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think that sometimes we think of romance.
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  SPEAKER_01: As a formulaic genre,
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  SPEAKER_01: things in romance like the meet cute and the dark night of the soul and
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  SPEAKER_01: the happily ever after.
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  SPEAKER_01: So we understand the two narratives to work in a similar way.
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  SPEAKER_01: Of course, they're deeper than that type of understanding implies.
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  SPEAKER_01: But but I think we see a crossover there.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: I just thought of hearing we said ATU index.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think there should be a t-shirt waiting to happen.
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  SPEAKER_00: I break or I love ATU 425C.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and there are there are T-shirts out there like that.
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  SPEAKER_01: So you've got to go shopping and get yourself one.
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  SPEAKER_01: I've got to get one.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is hilarious.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's true.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking here, too, in Portuguese, we say romance as literary fiction.
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  SPEAKER_00: When you go to the bookstore, the section on romance, I think it has changed now.
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  SPEAKER_00: But when I was growing up, romance was any book that was a literary fiction.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so it was tapping into the,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think,
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  SPEAKER_00: the original word itself from the medieval times,
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  SPEAKER_00: romance not necessarily being what we understand romance to be now as a genre.
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  SPEAKER_01: Right.
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  SPEAKER_01: And the term romance really meant a story told in the vernacular, right?
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  SPEAKER_01: A story that wasn't being written in the classical Latin.
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  SPEAKER_01: So that idea of telling a story in a language that is accessible,
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  SPEAKER_01: a story that is intended for a wide audience of people and not just
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  SPEAKER_01: a small educated audience of people.
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  SPEAKER_01: I think that holds with our contemporary perceptions of how romance works
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  SPEAKER_01: within literature as well.
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  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: I was just going to say that because it's still perceived
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  SPEAKER_00: as like it is not high literature, if you will.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sadly, though, yes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sadly.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's a whole soapbox I would get to.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's unfair.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the romance genre as is now,
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  SPEAKER_00: as we understand it,
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  SPEAKER_00: what were some of the seed ideas back in the 1700s that kind of gave it this twist
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  SPEAKER_00: as we see it now?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think what you started to see in novels in the 1700s and in the 1800s that focused
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  SPEAKER_01: on romance or that were the birth of the romance genre,
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  SPEAKER_01: you start to see novels that center women who are distinct.
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  SPEAKER_01: They're distinct individuals.
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  SPEAKER_01: They have desires and their desires and their individuality leads them
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  SPEAKER_01: to their happily ever after.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, historically here might be too big of a question.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: I guess what was happening historically that individuality for women was starting to come out?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well,
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: if you go across the whole sweep of history,
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: and we're talking about literature from the British tradition and then into
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: the American tradition,
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  SPEAKER_01: you definitely see the movement from collective identity toward individual identity.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: We see that happening over time.
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  SPEAKER_01: And I think women become a part of that conversation
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  SPEAKER_01: as different philosophers come out and start acknowledging that women are beings
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  SPEAKER_01: who are not just...
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  SPEAKER_01: Subservient to men.
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  SPEAKER_01: Right.
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  SPEAKER_01: So as women become more seen in society,
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: as women become more educated in society,
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  SPEAKER_01: as women have access to books which are being printed more often in the 17th
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  SPEAKER_01: and 18th century than they ever were in earlier times,
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  SPEAKER_01: we start to see an audience for stories of this kind.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so, yeah, we became considered somewhat more fully human a little over 300 years ago.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Baby steps, I guess.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: A question here, well,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of battling two questions on my head here,
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: but okay,
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  SPEAKER_00: first one,
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  SPEAKER_00: which novel,
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: at least in the English language, of course, was considered the first romance?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a tough question, and I think different people would answer it in different ways.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that there is one definitive answer to that question,
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: but I know that Samuel Richardson's Pamela,
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: which was written in 1740, is an That's, I think, the groundwork.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the first workplace slash billionaire romance trope we had.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely an early one.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: I can't say definitively it's the first, but it's definitely one of the early ones.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then as we move,
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  SPEAKER_01: of course,
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  SPEAKER_01: into the 19th century,
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  SPEAKER_01: you have Miss Jane Austen,
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  SPEAKER_01: who we love,
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  SPEAKER_01: who is entering into this space as well and is furthering that idea of women
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  SPEAKER_01: who are individuals who are looking for something
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  SPEAKER_01: beyond just what society has offered them.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: I had heard that Pamela was considered the first one,
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: but I didn't know that trophy for the first romance novel isn't fully 100% claimed.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, first workplace romance, Pamela.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
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  SPEAKER_00: So the other thing I was thinking here, too,
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: is a lot of people will consider if they're criticizing romance as a genre,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's like, oh, the happily ever after.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fairy tale.
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  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people consider fairy tales like they have the happy ending.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And part of me is like,
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: when you really read fairy tales,
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I would say all fairy tales in general have a happy ending
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  SPEAKER_00: the way we have simplistically thought about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I actually think a lot of fairy tales actually are quite tough,
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  SPEAKER_00: gruesome even,
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  SPEAKER_00: and not really romantic,
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  SPEAKER_00: quote unquote, as we simplistically like to think culturally.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, it's just a fairy tale.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a guaranteed happy ending.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't think so.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: What do you what do you think of that?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're absolutely right.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that fairy tales are inherently romantic narratives.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I would say that more often than not, they are not romantic narratives.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: They are stories that help us to navigate the limitations.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And a more adult state.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it's not necessarily about the romance per se.
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  SPEAKER_01: So in a lot of fairy tales,
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  SPEAKER_01: the prince will show up at the end and there will be a happily ever after.
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  SPEAKER_01: But the story itself is not in any way about falling in love.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there are some exceptions to that.
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  SPEAKER_01: And of course, we know the exception is my favorite fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast.
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  SPEAKER_01: That is a fairy tale that does look at what happens as a precursor to marriage.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: But most fairy tales are not meant to be romantic narratives per se.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think that one of the reasons they've become so romanticized in our mind has to do
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: with the tremendous impact of Walt Disney.
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  SPEAKER_01: And each of these movies ended with this beautiful fairytale wedding.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there are weddings featured in those fairy tales,
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: but they are not quite so beautiful as Disney makes them seem.
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  SPEAKER_01: They are oftentimes difficult and harsh,
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: and there are punishments being enacted during the weddings.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I think in our minds,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: we've created the idea of a fairy tale wedding as a piece of a fairy tale narrative.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: But that's something our culture has added to the flat nature of fairy tales rather
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: than pulling out of.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know,
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: because Cinderella,
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: wow, that marriage, depending on the version you read, is quite gruesome.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's true.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Disney, for this.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing that I find also interesting is,
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: in my understanding of fairy tales,
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: there were once stories that you were told to everyone, not just children.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And now,
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: pretty much probably since the Grimm's,
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  SPEAKER_00: I'm assuming, they have been geared towards children more and more.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think are some of the consequences of that?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I do think that fairy tales were originally not intended for a child audience.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: They were very much intended for a multi-generational audience,
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  SPEAKER_01: and they are full of themes that are very adult in nature.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we do see them strongly.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that is where we technically house the study of fairy tale today.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's within the genre of children's literature.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Even though the narratives are not really meant to be for children.
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  SPEAKER_01: So today we have a wide variety of fairy tales that are directed toward child audiences.
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  SPEAKER_01: And those sit side by side with a variety of retellings that are directed
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: toward adult audiences.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was in about the 1970s that fairy tales became children.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Part of the discussion in scholarly circles,
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: because you had researchers who were looking into the effects
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: that fairy tale narratives had primarily on the development of the females.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of feminist scholars or children's literature scholars were looking
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: at fairy tales and the effect might have on the developing young women.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: And once they move into that realm of scholarly discourse,
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: you start to see artists begin to treat them in interesting ways
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: and reclaim them again for adult audiences.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the first fairy tale romance is published in about 1979, too.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's usually given to Robin McKinley's story Beauty.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I have that book.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Fairytale romance crossover.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of the titles, again,
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure that's in dispute,
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: but that's one of the titles that tends to get named as one of
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: the first fairytale romances.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love that book.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a great retelling.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting because I have read books on using fairytales from
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: a psychological perspective,
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: like the archetypal,
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: like what's happening in the psyche and using those stories as a reflection
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I have found that to be extremely helpful for myself and working with clients.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing I've always noticed,
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: especially when I started entering into reading romance, is the retellings.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And there are so many more now, I feel.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you think is driving these retellings now?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's such an interesting question.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: I do think we see a lot of retellings, particularly in the romance genre right now.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: And retellings have always been there.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you could argue that the Odyssey is a retelling of myth that circumstances.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that retellings have always been present in the way that we shape stories
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: and probably a folklorist or a psychologist or a sociologist would be
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: a better person to answer what's driving the retellings that we see now.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: But I could make a guess.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think that in a turbulent world.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: We find comfort in a familiar narrative.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think in a world that we are living in,
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: which is increasingly technology driven and increasingly consumer driven,
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: there is a lot of comfort in acknowledging our animal desires,
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: at least through fantasy or romance and fairy tale narratives do allow us to do
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: that.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's one reason we see so many retellings today.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: As you were saying that, I was thinking I hadn't realized how many...
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Stories in romance feature,
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: especially in romanticcy or the retellings,
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: or even if it's not a retelling,
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: this magical world that does not have the technology we have.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And also,
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have thought about a lot of these,
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: especially the retellings or if they're more paranormal or monstrous.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like these stories are helping us keep wildness within alive and Absolutely.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we're tending to that wild garden of ourselves in our psyche while
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: the world is getting more and more flat in terms of the stories that they're pushing
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: towards us, the kind of the belief that they're pushing.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: So in the recesses of our imagination, we are going into our gardens, if you will.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: And through these stories, we get to inhabit that world a little bit.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you bring that so beautifully.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what the once upon a time of a fairy tale allows us,
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: even more so than a contemporary romance.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think if you're working with a fairy tale romance or a monster romance or
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: a romanticy that's in formality.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little less threatening to explore it in a world that doesn't truly exist
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: than it is to explore it in the world that you're living in.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: As you said that,
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking I particularly dislike the billionaire romance trope or types of books
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: for somewhat obvious reasons for the not really loving billionaires.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: But so when I had to read a few books,
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was telling my husband,
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: this is more fantastic than I have such a hard time staying in the story
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: because it's in our contemporary world.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm totally fine in reading a story where he's like, oh, he's a 500-year-old vampire.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he falls in love with this girl and their fated mates.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Totally believable.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in it.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's a billionaire falling in love with his secretary, I'm like, Billy?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can't get into the story as quickly as I would with a fairy tale retelling or
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: a more fantastical story.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with you.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm more of a historical romance girl or more of a fairy tale romance girl than I am
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: a contemporary romance girl because I do want to be swept away.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's one of the things that fantasy and fairy tale and romance do offer us.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a valid reason to want to read a story.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of these retellings, I mean,
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't read as I read them as I find them interesting,
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: but I haven't read as many.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing I have found interesting,
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: at least in looking at what's out there,
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: One is a sort of a reimagining, well,
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: it is a retelling,
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: but it's a reimagining and changing some rules in the story or some elements in
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: the story, be it at a fairy tale or a myth, I have found to be interesting.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Some, I feel a little bit more disturbed by the changes they make.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not in agreement, but I haven't read them.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: I've read the synopsis and I was like, no, I don't think I'm going to go there.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: So in your...
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Perspective.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of these retellings doing that are good and they're doing it well?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And what do you wish they would do better?
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this is permission to be judgy.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think a good story can take a fairy tale and make it something even more complex
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: or more individual.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because fairy tales exist in a paratactic way.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: They are paratactic narratives.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: They tell us What happens?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: We know that Little Red Riding Hood goes to her grandmother's house.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: We know that she meets a wolf along the way.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: We know she gets into bed with the wolf and we know the wolf eats her.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: But we really don't know why any of those things are happening.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're only told the what.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the best fairy tale retellings will enter into one of those gaps in
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: the narrative of the fairy tale.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: It will ask a question about why a character has done something or why something has happened.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think the only danger comes in when you have writers who don't know much
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: about folklore or fairy tale who are retelling a fairy tale just for the purposes
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: of using the plot and adding a little spice.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Not that there's anything wrong with writing a book like that,
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: but I suppose the danger would be that that's going to ultimately flatten
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: the fairy tale rather than make it more complex.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the best retellings are interrogating what happens within a fairy tale
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: and proposing a reason for why it happens,
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: which is actually making the fairy tale more complex rather than less.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: I loved that explanation because one,
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: you touched on something that It's interesting because in a fairy tale,
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking here when I read Grimm's,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: for example,
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: one, you don't get to see the feeling of the main character.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: You don't get to know the real why and the reasoning, like you said.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so sometimes, depending on the fairy tale, it can feel somewhat a little flat.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: You get the events, but you don't get the feeling vibes, right?
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's because they were originally orally circulated.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: So you would have had storytellers who were adept at adding some of that feeling in
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: with the way they were using their voice and the way they were using their movements
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: to correspond to the narrative and to react to the audience's reaction to
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: the narrative points of the plot.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think also because folklore and fairy tales a part of folklore is defined
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: as creative communication within small groups,
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: usually had these stories being told to audiences who might have known more about.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we've just lost that knowledge because now we're disseminating the fairy tale
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: to such a wide group of people.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just thinking of when he wrote that story,
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: the color red was actually very expensive to get.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was not an easy color.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why when you see paintings of monarchs and whatever,
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: they are wearing red because red is, in essence, they were showing their bling.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: And now red for us is very common.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't think of it that way.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: But when a writer then engages with a fairy tale that might seem very flat,
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: they could put a whole new reason for the color red being in there because they have
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: the chance to now add details to what seems like a flat narrative.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I have read some retellings that are inspired by Red Riding Hood.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, they were flat.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: They were not great.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I did read one.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: She expanded enormously.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Elise Kova, she wrote one where she wasn't necessarily Red Riding Hood, but she had a hood.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: She had the cloak and she was a witch and she gets taken with the wolf shifter.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it was kind of a real...
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any fairy tales that retellings more recently that you've read
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: that you really thought they knocked it out of the park?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I read a lot of fairy tale retellings and I love them.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: I love Juliet Marillier's Heart's Blood, which is a folkloric Yeah.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what do you think happens to the fairy tale when it gets retold so many times?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: What transforms in the story?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think that by retelling a story over and over again,
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: it shows us something about what a culture might value or what
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: a culture might feel it's missing.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, Cinderella is the And that kind of corresponds to our identity as well.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Cinderella is usually born into a degree of wealth, then loses it and restores it.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a little bit different than a rise tale.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: But nevertheless,
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: you see different cultures and different generations kind of linking themselves to
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: a particular tale, telling it over a few different times.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that can probably reveal something about what the culture thinks.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's true.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that it was the number one retelling in the U.S.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to bet it was Beauty and the Beast, but...
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: But now it's Cinderella and people really love that.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: Might be taking over.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think ACOTAR had a huge influence on that because ACOTAR was such
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: a huge commercial success and,
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: was leaning into Beauty and the Beast and I think was at the forefront of,
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think, the popularity of romanticity.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: Beauty and the Beast perhaps might take it over.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: You take all monster romance into account.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Funny enough,
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: my friend who got me to read Akatar,
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: and that's the gateway that I got into all of this,
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: she pitched it as like, oh, it's a Beauty and the Beast retelling.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to like it.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: So she knew me well.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the rest is history after that.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: I do find it very intriguing,
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: not only because I like monster romance and Beauty and
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: the Beast being my favorite fairy tale,
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: and my favorite myth is Persephone and Hades.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like there is a connection in my mind between Persephone and Hades through,
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm skipping a few stories in between,
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: but all the way through to Pride and Prejudice,
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: which I think is Hades and Persephone,
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Beauty and the Beast with the cravat, and then Beauty and the Beast in there.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I find it psychologically, I wonder if now these stories are so much more popular as well.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: They kind of hit that archetypal nerve in the culture because we're having
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: to wrestle with our own shadows.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the monster really represents this other,
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: the ultimate other, the thing we fear, the thing that is still wild.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: I find interesting in a lot of these stories where Where the monster is actually
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: in many ways way more human and humane than the humans.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is what we're wrestling with right now in our culture.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: And consider the implications of technology and the rise of AI.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: What are we?
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I think those make sense to me to be so becoming ever more popular.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think about that?
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: We also have a rise in feminism right in our culture today, which is a good thing.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, women want to be equal.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: They want to be treated as equal.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: They want equal access to everything that a society has to offer.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: But that rise in feminism is coupled with the uncomfortable recognition
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: that equality and equity are not always the same thing.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: So while women want to have equal access and equal status within our society,
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: that doesn't necessarily mean we want to behave like men or conform to the behaviors
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: that have been established by men.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: We very much still desire to be treated like women.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: And there is sort of an animalistic element to, I think, we see at work in the monster romances.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think hunger.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: That I see in monster romance, to me, that's what is hitting up on.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Again,
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: it's kind of fulfilling that fantasy of being respected as sovereign and in yourself
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: and having agency and power and being with a being that can hold that space.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: It is not threatened by that power.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: If nothing else, it actually helps you unleash it.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: As opposed to what we see happening in the culture right now.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting to me that you say you don't like the billionaire romances,
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: but oftentimes when I'm teaching Beauty and the Beast,
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: which we're kind of pitching as a monster romance,
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: one of the things we talk about in my class is the fact that it is an economic.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: Just like Cinderella,
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: Beauty has lost a certain degree of wealth because of her father's ineffectiveness
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: and the Beast restores her to a greater degree of wealth because even though he is
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: a Beast, he is wealthy.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we crave,
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: even though we don't want to say that,
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: we crave that kind of security that wealth can bring.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Not the wealth of the billionaire,
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: which is that more patriarchal,
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: capitalistic idea of wealth,
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: but the wealth Of the beast,
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: which is the wealth that brings us access to beauty and art and music and books
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: and food and wine, right?
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Wealth that allows us to freely give love and to freely take love.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm always reminded of something that my college roommate said,
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: and I hope she won't get mad for me sharing this story.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: But she came home from class one day when we were seniors and she was upset about something.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, despite every feminist bone in my body, I just want to marry a rich man.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we tease her to
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: this day.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: But that is so true if we're talking about the kind of wealth that the beast or
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: the monster offers us,
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: which is a wealth that simply allows us to meet them as equal.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first, I hope your friend did marry a rich man and she got her wish.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I think this is really interesting because I think about Persephone and Hades.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: Hades, of all the gods of the Olympians, is actually the richest.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Pluto, the Roman name, it means wealth.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: It is the wealth of the earth.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: He is the richest.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it starts there.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: But what I find interesting...
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: In these stories is that,
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: yes, a beast is rich, is wealthy, but it feels like it's a wealth that's generative.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's also a wealth that touching on women wanting to be equal
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: and having equal access.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the realization is,
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: is oftentimes the women can have access to something,
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: but the environment is not equitable to them.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: And let's say climb the corporate ladder,
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: but the whole work system challenges you at every step of the way to manage family
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: and life and work, right?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not really made for, it's not very conducive for that.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: And there's these monstrous characters.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's a generative wealth for me, as opposed to the billionaire person.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: I get thrilled with the billionaire romance,
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: but I can only stick around the story if he transforms enough
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: to become more generous with his wealth.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: He will use his wealth for something generative.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: I agree with you 100 percent.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: There has to be something generative, something distasteful about that hoarding kind of wealth.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: That is reflective of the capitalist society to just take more, more, more, more.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the wealth that we see in the fairy tales with Beauty and
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: the Beast is very different from them.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because the wealth we see now in the world, in the front pages, it is, to me, cancerous.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's just greed.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's cannibalistic and cancerous.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just eating itself.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not a gift that is generative.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: It is not...
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the hoarding is so disgusting.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have any other words for that.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think in these stories, I mean, I'm just thinking out loud now.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's something important to I feel as we read these stories of the female meets
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: the wealthy other.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it took me away from the story because I'm like, I get it.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: The man rules the night court.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to tell me the obvious.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: But it was something that kind of drove that point for me,
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: that sense of like she was signaling at something.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think sometimes the wealth,
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: wealth of power,
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: magic or literal gold coins in these stories is Sometimes I wonder if it is tapping
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: into a wish of the representation of the masculine that
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: is a generous wealth
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: that wants to be shared.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: If that makes any sense,
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: like it's the two coming together in the story, the catalyst of transformation.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you think of beauty going to Beast's palates,
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: she brings in an aliveness,
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: a curiosity,
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: a relational possibility for Beast who's been isolated,
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: rich, but isolated and And he needs that engagement.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: He needs the relational that she brings.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think she going to the library inside the palace,
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: all the books, there's an awakening of that knowledge.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he, by having the palace,
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: by having that space,
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: And having her there,
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: there's like together they're kind of transforming the whole thing.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: She brings life to that space, that container.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: And his container of wealth allows her to transform as well.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: It makes perfect.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's an absolutely beautiful way to read the fairy tale.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think same type of criticism can be applied to pride and prejudice
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: and what happens between Elizabeth and Darcy,
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: who, of course, is an incredibly rich and wealthy gentleman.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: But he uses that wealth to help not only the woman he loves,
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: but her entire family when they're not necessarily deserving of that help.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that idea of a generative wealth is much more appealing than the idea of
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: the billionaire wealth.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for me,
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: that is the key element in Pride and Prejudice and how he transforms that,
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: how he goes from, I mean,
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: we don't know before if he was generous or not,
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: but I think it'd be safe to say that he was not.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: But by meeting her, he transforms in that way.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: He becomes generous without having to have the red carpet rolled out for him to say,
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: thank you, thank you.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: He actually wants to stay anonymous.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's not performative.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, not performative at all.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: He's not hashtagging.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: Giving away millions.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hashtag.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of these rich folks out there should emulate Darcy, perhaps.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, a little bit about fairy tales again.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of fairy tales, they run on tasks.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's always a bargain.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: There are some helpers along the way, some challenges along the way.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you see that in romance novels?
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think we definitely see it in romance novels because that's an aspect
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: of life itself as well.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a good romance novel is going to have an entire community that they have built.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just a story of two characters.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's two characters existing within some sort of social context.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're going to have generous characters and characters who are authentic in
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: the way they move through life,
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: they have to interact not only with one another, but also with other characters.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so we get that idea of side characters.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, since you also work with folklore,
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm here, I'm going on my experience of just as a listener and reader of folklore.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: These are stories that in some ways came from the experience of that culture in
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: that space and that landscape that for generation has been shared in some capacity
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: or other.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think all these tasks and bargains and threshold helpers and such,
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: for me, they touch on perhaps what is the archetypal journey of a human.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we just give it different names.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: As we go,
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: as we evolve,
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: like what happens in fairy tales and then how we might call it in literature,
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: it might change a little bit.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: But in essence, it's happening to the same thing.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's just human life.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: We meet tasks.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: We have to strike some bargains.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: Before it used to be with the gods.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now it might be with a fae lord or some billionaire.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: We meet helpers along the way.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's just the archetypal journey of life.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think we experience that in our everyday life as well.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: In the books, they're just a lot better dressed.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: Might have nice wingspans and magical help.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the beauty of literature, right?
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: We can take these ordinary everyday experiences and dress them up
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: as something fantastical and enjoy them and get pleasure from them.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what do you think that romance novels do that fairy tales can't?
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think a romance novel is specifically speaking to that idea
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: of two people coming together and forming a union or a happily ever after or
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: a happily for now.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a fairy tale tends to be more focused on an individual character,
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: whereas with romance,
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: it seems to me that you can't have a romance unless you have that dual structure,
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: that dual narrative structure of two people coming together.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I think they're just doing different things.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: They're functioning in different ways, even though we see that overlap.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's true.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot that.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's the thing that I find so attractive in romance.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's coming together of sometimes they're opposing forces or at least they're other
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: to each other and that they together catalyze their experience.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: Things change.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then by the end of the story,
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: They are transformed in such a way that to me that's what they're coming together,
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: be it a marriage or they just end together,
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: is the culmination of that synthesis of the two opposites coming into contact.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and that's why you love Beauty and the Beast because inherent in
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: that fairy tale structure is that idea of the dual narrative arc.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: You have the transformation not only of the Beast,
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_01: but you have a transformation of the Beauty character as well.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: She learns to love the Beast and she learns to go back to the Beast.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they're both dynamic characters who are changing over the course of time.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not true of every fairy tale, but it's definitely there in Beauty and the Beast.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's where we draw that line to romance.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I'm thinking here,
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was never a fan,
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: too much of a fan of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty because I felt
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: that they were not very participant, especially Sleeping Beauty.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: She was asleep.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: But Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella to a certain extent, they're more participatory heroines.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: They're more engaged in the,
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like they have a bit more action and agency in their own experience
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: of what's happening.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: it definitely depends on how you read the fairy tale and it depends on the version
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: of the fairy tale that you do read.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think it definitely seems like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White,
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: in our perception,
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: are passive fairy tale characters because we tend to know those stories
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: through their Disney representations where they do in fact unfold as quite passive.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: And Beauty and the Beast is based on,
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: it's housed as ATU-425C,
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: but it's housed beneath a larger umbrella category of ATU-425,
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: which is the search for the lost husband.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think Rings is particularly feminist and particularly contemporary to those
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: of us who are living in the 21st century.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it makes me think of Psyche and Eros and the story of Tamlin with the heroines.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: Psyche especially has her tasks.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: I have used that myth a lot.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's extremely helpful.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: And Eros is categorized as an ATU 425B,
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: which is one of the search for the lost husband, Beauty and the Beast narratives.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: So considered an early form of Beauty and the Beast,
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: even though it's more mythological because it's dealing with
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: a mythological character.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: I always thought that the fairy tale we like as children,
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: the one that really grabbed our attention,
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: says something about the themes of our lives.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think about that?
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's probably true.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have the expertise to say with evidence it's true,
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: but I like to ask people what their favorite fairy tale is.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: And knowing a lot about the fairy tales themselves,
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: I do tend to use that information to better understand that person on some level.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's an interesting technique.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: What was your favorite fairy tale when you were young?
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was Beauty and the Beast.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: I remember the book my mother got me.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had all these fairy tales together.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was a beautiful edition, had these amazing illustrations.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so taken.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was probably what?
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, six maybe?
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: And...
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I only came to the Disney version way, way later.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that was the version I had.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so taken by it.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I think for a long time,
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I liked that story because I liked the transformation that he goes
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: through.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it planted that seed for me of the transformation is possible.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then for a long,
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: long time,
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: other than Persephone and Hades, the other one I really loved was Psyche and Eros.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought that was really... Well, he stays beautiful, but she, I think, transforms.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_00: She gains more confidence, if you will.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, there was something about the element of the transformation for me.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I think now older...
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: I actually like when the beast does not transform into the human form,
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: but I like the fact that to me it's kind of a union,
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: a coming together of the human and the wild,
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: that the wild gets to stay wild and it stays vital and it stays respected.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: I like that aspect of it.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that's one of the benefits of using a fairy tale like that in
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: a romance story is that the transformation doesn't have to be
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: the literal transformation of the beast.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: We can have a metaphorical transformation.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe this might be too much information, but...
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: When I met my husband, it was on a blind date.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I was set up by one of my best friends.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: And when I saw him, he entered the car.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: We had to pick him up.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: So he enters the car and I see just his side of his face.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I could see he has this huge scar on his side of his face.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember seeing him and just being like,
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: wow, Jason, because my friend was like, oh, yeah, we're just going to pick up Jason.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh, that's Jason.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like in that moment, I was like, just taken already.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so the joke my friend had with me, she's like, it was a scar, wasn't it?
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, yeah, it was a scar.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love that.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: So in some ways, to me, that's kind of like the element of the beast.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's got this.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my goodness.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so just I guess in a way I did find my beast.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: all good.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I love that.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's beautiful.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that we can romanticize our lives in that way.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: We can use these fairy tale narratives to see the moments in our life
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: as being really beautiful moments and worthy of being told in a story.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: I do find that interesting to look at our lives and think of it a story.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I think the fairy tale or the story that really stayed
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: with us does give us information or maybe some kind of compass for our own life.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_01: That is fascinating.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: And now I know because we talked last time I was on the podcast,
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: Beauty and the Beast is my favorite fairy tale,
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: but it's not one that I knew in my childhood.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know it until I saw.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_01: The Disney film.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was younger, I remember having two fairy tale books.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: I had a Cinderella and I had a Snow White book.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I was much more drawn to the Snow White fairy tale,
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: not because of Snow White herself,
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: but because it She had this beautiful picture on the first page
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_01: of her mother sitting in the window and sewing and wishing for a child.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was just the most beautiful picture.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was very drawn to that picture and the picture of Snow White running through
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: the forest and all the trees and the roots were reaching out to grab and trip her.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_01: And there was something very frightening and spooky about it.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I absolutely loved those pictures and that story when I was younger.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I don't know.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably not the same book,
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: but I did have a book that had an illustration with the mother sitting by the window
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_00: and a drop of blood falling on the snow.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, so beautiful.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: What does that say about me, Vanessa?
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what that says about me.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think it's a good exercise to have a look at your own life.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think for me, Snow White is...
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: Snow White is a complex relationship to me with mother.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: Granted, it's the stepmother that comes in, but I don't know.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's something that's one I personally felt.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was a challenging story because the mother was so,
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: well, the stepmother, so narcissistic, right?
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: In early oral variants of Snow White, it is actually her mother and not her stepmother.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's the Grimm's who turn the mother into a stepmother after they realize that
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: the story is being circulated differently.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one of the things the Grimm's do successively over several publications
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_01: of their collection of fairy tales.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: They start to change elements of the tales to make them more palatable for a child audience.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it has that element.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: The mother wants to stay beautiful.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't want the daughter to grow and compete with her.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think, I mean,
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: psychologically,
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: the story has often been interpreted as like the sexual,
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: not awakening, but the transformation of the daughter and mother.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: Moving away from that and resisting that power.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: Even as a child,
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: I felt challenged with that story because I felt that the mother did not want
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: to give up her throne, if you will, in more ways than others.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's definitely a power struggle at work.
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely a power struggle.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the daughter.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it does tend to land upon beauty.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's the way we understand that power struggle.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_01: But again,
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's because Snow White,
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: which is coming to us in the version that we know from the Brothers Grimm,
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: that's taking place within a patriarchal environment where women are only valued
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: for their beauty.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that becomes the thing that the mother and daughter are competing over in the story.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: But it's interesting to me because we see it as so distasteful,
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: that play of power between mother and daughter.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: But yet when fathers and sons kind of engage in that same sort of play of power,
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: we call that epic.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting how we treat the female characters differently than
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: the male characters, even when they're engaged in a similar type of behavior.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think...
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I myself had a challenging relationship with my mother,
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: so I think even as a kid,
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: already four,
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: five, six, I had a sense of it, that there was a competition in the air.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't about beauty,
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: but I think if we step back and see beauty as perhaps the power tapping into
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: the life force of being able to attract things to oneself and to be Yes.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: It might show up.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: And you see that Snow White in that fairy tale is only able to defeat her mother
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: when she marries.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because the marriage is not so much an element of romance in the Snow White story.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's more an element of lifting the child up to a position of power.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: So she is a married woman.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_01: She's meeting her mother on equal terms at the end of the story.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that allows her the ability to defeat her mother.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think to a lot of women,
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: when they do get married,
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_00: there is a sense of like,
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: no, no, no, now you can't come into my house and walk around like you own the place.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am the queen of my house.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_01: It definitely changes the way we perceive ourself in relation to the rest
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: of our family structure.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I did have another extra thing on the Snow White is that I think I was five
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: or six and there was a play in school and I thought I was a shoe in to get
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: the Snow White part.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I got to be the queen.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I got to play the villain and I did really well.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: I got a standing ovation.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think the villain is always more fun to play.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time,
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_00: I thought,
• 1:04:17
  SPEAKER_00: even as a young kid,
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, if I was to pursue this, I think playing the villain would be nice.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: I have photos of it.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_00: I have proof of me holding the mirror and doing the whole speech thing.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to want to see those photos.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was hilarious.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I did slip on the floor on the stage.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: There was a scene that Snow White was mopping the floor or something
• 1:04:42
  SPEAKER_00: and I had new shoes and I slipped and fell.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_00: And my father had to jump on the stage and get me up again because I was about to start crying.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I managed to not cry and finish the play.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think so part of it,
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think I got the standing ovations as people were also sorry that I fell on
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: the stage.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: And but I got back up and did the rest of the play.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: So there is something to be said for that.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: Something to be said for that.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was just like thinking about that.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that memory lane and I got distracted here.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, another story, and I always missed, I confused the title, but I love it.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: East of the Moon, West of the Moon.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: East of the Sun, West of the Moon.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: That's another one that I love as well.
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that is a Beauty and the Beast story.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_01: It is ATU 425A or the Search for the Lost Husband.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an older oral version from Norway of what we would now call the Beauty and
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_01: the Beast story.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: So there are a lot there's lots of crossover there.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I forgot the name of the author.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote the book ETH.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just so beautiful.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I have to read that one.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't read that.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's beautiful.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then I more recently I found out that there's another one.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's West.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_00: She wrote the second part.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I have to read that now.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: Hooray.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, but here's an interesting thing,
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: because I feel like I have to have a T-shirt that has all these.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: I love the ATU 425ABC.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: But this interesting element of the search for the lost husband, that's intriguing to me.
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think...
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_00: In looking at a lot of the romance novels,
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: even if they're not retellings,
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: a straight up retelling, I feel like there's that element still running through it.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: Search for the lost, maybe not the husband per se, but the lost other.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think of that?
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's true.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if you look at the way a romance story generally unfolds,
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_01: you have the couple come together and then there's something that breaks them apart
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_01: before they come together again and find their happily ever after.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the narrative pathway of East of the Sun,
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_01: West of the Moon or any of the ATU 425A stories, The Search for the Lost Husband.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we definitely see that pattern at work in romance stories.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm thinking,
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: as you said, that I'm thinking through the collective lens of what's happening.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_00: The relationship between men and women in our culture,
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_00: all these sort of alarming headlines, you take them as you will.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_00: But I do find that intriguing because when I wrote my thesis,
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote the thesis looking at romantic comedies as one would work with a dream.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the stories I picked, the hero was in search of the other, the man, right?
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the masculine, to me,
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: in those stories,
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_00: they became like the torchbearers for the women to actually do their inner work
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_00: and do the healing with their own feminine aspects.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: So they were like the threshold guides.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: They were the threshold guides.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: But when we look at what we're talking about,
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: these types of fairy tales,
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_00: the ATU 425s, where it's the search for the lost husband.
• 1:08:39
  SPEAKER_00: If I think of the collective and how these stories are so old,
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if there's something different.
• 1:08:48
  SPEAKER_00: In the field that we, if you will, the feminine has to then go in search for the masculine.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_00: The masculine is lost in some capacity.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: And they will be,
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: if you will,
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_00: rescued or brought back from wherever they are through the feminine going and doing
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_00: that sort of the journey, the steps, bargains and the transformation towards them.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess I wonder,
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_00: because in a lot of these stories we see being published,
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_00: there's that element again.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: So what do you think of that?
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_00: Am I going way off the deep end here?
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think that's a really interesting way to look at the fairy tale.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a really interesting way to look at how the fairy tale is being used
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_01: by contemporary writers who are engaging with it to look at the way the masculine
• 1:09:42
  SPEAKER_01: and the feminine And
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: that idea that the female has to be a quest and part of
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_01: that relationship is maybe something that our culture holds dear.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_01: So we can see that reflected.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_01: Beauty and the Beast is one of the oldest fairy tales that we have record of in existence.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's more than 2,000 years old.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_01: It can be traced back more than 2,000
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_01: There are over 1500 distinct variations of Beauty and the Beast.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's Shadowtail Bluebeard,
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: which also deals with marriage,
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_01: but in a very different way, adds even more numbers to that count.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is something very wide ranging in the way that fairy tale exists and
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_01: the way we engage with it.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's interesting.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So more than 2,000 years old.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's why for me, I think Persephone and Hades is in there.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so to me,
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_00: it shows something about perhaps the process that the feminine psyche has to go
• 1:10:56
  SPEAKER_00: through or the feminine in general as an archetype.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not even speaking of gender per se, but there's something that that's how they dance.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_00: They come together in some way, but they're not quite fit yet.
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then they have to separate and they come together.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_00: The feminine has to do something.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the masculine does
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_01: something too.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it really is fascinating because it seems on some level,
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_01: such a simple thing, romance, right?
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_01: A love story, right?
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Two people falling in love.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_01: But there's also something so miraculous about it.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like how do you fall in love with one person out of all of the people in the world?
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_01: How does that become sort of the guiding force of your life?
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_01: We see it happen so often in our lifetimes, yet there's something miraculous about it.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's true, yeah.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's both easy and difficult at the same time.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_00: You could fall in love, if you will, easily, but the journey together takes a lot more.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_01: I really like what you say about those archetypal images that exist in the fairy tale.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I like to think of fairy tale and folklore as the warp threads in a tapestry
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_01: when you're weaving a tapestry.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then the weft threads,
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_01: which go over and under the warp threads, create the design of the tapestry.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I like to think of the folklore or the fairy tale beneath the literature
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_01: as being the warp threads, the structure that is holding the new story in place.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of the artistry comes in through
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_01: the individual writers weaving those weft threads together,
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes so beautifully that you can't even see the warp threads beneath
• 1:12:53
  SPEAKER_01: the design, but they're still there.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love that image.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_00: I love it because I have so often used the image of weaving.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that is, I never thought of it that way.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if we think of them as the warp thread that is creating the,
• 1:13:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, the, I'm changing the words here.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is it the warp or the?
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_01: The warp thread is the structure.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_01: The structure, yes.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the artistry.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the warp is, to me, those are the archetypal resonance.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's why they stay,
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_00: no matter what we do, always there, show up in different ways, but they're there.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_00: They hold the structure.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_00: I like to think of romance as medicine,
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_00: not just for an individual life, but I think romance is a medicine.
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a map of how do we heal our relational wounds and to ourselves and to
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_00: the other, more importantly, the other.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_00: So to think of this image that you just laid out for us about the warp, it's interesting.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're touching on it.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And again,
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_00: in this time where our
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_00: cultures feel so fractured and the relationship between men
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_00: and women,
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_00: there's so much wounding between men and women that I'm thinking it's kind
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_00: of also interesting that romance as a genre has gained power.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Even more strength and popularity.
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's not just a good marketing.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_00: There's something in the psyche that is hungry and that is nourishment.
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think we always return.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_01: We always return to the body.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_01: We always return to those simple stories.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we always return to that sense of who we are in those simple stories.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's why the shape keeps coming back.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's my soapbox.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm on it.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, I think that's something.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything else about fairy tales and romance that we haven't touched on
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_00: that you think is maybe we should be touching on?
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think so.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think the only thing that troubles me about romance as a genre is
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_01: the controversies that kind of stem around it and even the controversies that stem
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_01: from within it.
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_01: So not only people looking at it from the outside and saying, Well, we need it.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think, I mean...
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think as simplistic as it may be, love is the force to weave Star Wars with romance.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Our husbands would be happy.
• 1:16:44
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're honoring our husbands who are huge Star Wars.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_00: They're a fairy tale, right?
• 1:16:54
  SPEAKER_00: But what is it about within the romance community now that you're also in it as
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_00: a writer yourself that you're seeing that kind of really perhaps annoys you
• 1:17:09
  SPEAKER_00: or disturbs you?
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I've only just stepped a foot into the romance community with Sea and Stars.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_01: It is the first romance I've written.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's the only romance I've written.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's a Beauty and the Beast retelling.
• 1:17:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I've found that it seems like there are different camps within the romance community.
• 1:17:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's room for every type of writing within any genre.
• 1:17:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's room for every type of writing and every type of reader.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that there's a lot of conversations in the romance genre in particular
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_01: about what happens.
• 1:17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I more recently have seen just following different authors or people who talk
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_01: about books.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_00: The whole conversation of some authors removing the spice out of their books,
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_00: the uproar that has brought up.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it stems from the whole open door,
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_00: closed door,
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_00: so-called clean,
• 1:18:24
  SPEAKER_00: which then implies that if it's open door,
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_00: it's dirty, and then it's a whole other conversation.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And...
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it does to me feel disturbing.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_00: It feels, I'm curious and disturbed at the same time by seeing all of this.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it's sort of a weird policing within the community itself, within oneself as a writer.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that makes me sad because I really think that stories work best
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_01: when they're free to be whatever they're supposed to be.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that Stories like fairy tales,
• 1:19:02
  SPEAKER_01: stories like romance,
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_01: because they fly a little bit under the radar, can be wonderfully subversive.
• 1:19:08
  SPEAKER_01: They can do a lot in terms of shaping culture.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it makes me sad to see those kinds of controversies come up.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Not about what individuals like to write and read,
• 1:19:20
  SPEAKER_01: because I think everyone is free to read and to write what makes them comfortable.
• 1:19:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't like it when there is a directive as to what other writers
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_01: and other readers should be doing.
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that disturbs me.
• 1:19:34
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it's a bit of like a policing of the imagination.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_00: I feel, yeah, it does...
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_00: It does make me pause and be like, what is going on?
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why is this happening?
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it has always happened, but here it is again, right?
• 1:19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's interesting.
• 1:19:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Seems like it is really vibrant in the romance genre.
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it exists in other genres as well.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just learning about all these things.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because I'd be now thinking about it like in other genres, people,
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_00: authors going in and say,
• 1:20:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm removing all the gore and violence that I put in this book.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think all that rape and pillaging that I had this character do in this series,
• 1:20:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm taking it out.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And kind of watching,
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_00: for me, I'm sort of watching from the outside and being like, oh, how is this?
• 1:21:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's like watching a school of fish coming together and separating and sort
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_00: of like swarming something and how they sort of self-regulate.
• 1:21:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's the expression of something that I think is happening at a deeper level in the culture.
• 1:21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then it gets manifested that way in this respect, in this type of community.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much to think about in regards to these stories, isn't there?
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_00: If nothing else, they always give us the material.
• 1:21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's why they are in and of themselves like portals.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think these types of stories,
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_00: they are the archetypal entities and they just dress different outfits depending on
• 1:21:43
  SPEAKER_00: the time and the culture.
• 1:21:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it's really the same thing again and again.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think if I look at when I think about life on Earth,
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if Planet Earth was like a video game,
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_00: even though I'm not a video game player, this is sort of the rules of the game.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And we keep coming up to them all the time.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're just wearing different clothes.
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's really cool to think about it in that way.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Kelly,
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're returning and this is your second time,
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_00: but it still means you're going to get your rapid fire questions.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_01: No, you scare me.
• 1:22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Just shoot from the hip.
• 1:22:25
  SPEAKER_00: I will try my best.
• 1:22:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to try.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be easy, easy peasy.
• 1:22:29
  SPEAKER_00: So are you ready?
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_00: You want to take a deep breath?
• 1:22:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm ready.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:22:35
  SPEAKER_00: So what is a story that you return to again and again?
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_01: A story would be Beauty and the Beast for sure.
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any book?
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_00: That you return to again and again?
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Pride and Prejudice.
• 1:22:51
  SPEAKER_00: I know, we are Jane Austen fans in the house.
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Mr. Darcy, come on.
• 1:22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And okay, a book that you were given by someone who loved you and that has left a mark on you.
• 1:23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a really hard question.
• 1:23:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've been given a lot of books over the years.
• 1:23:15
  SPEAKER_01: A recent one.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Many of them have left marks
• 1:23:19
  SPEAKER_00: on me.
• 1:23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, my goodness.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking at my bookshelves behind me.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_01: I know we don't have our cameras on, but you can envision my bookshelves.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know what to say.
• 1:23:31
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many that I love.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Has there been a recent one you got?
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm coming up with a blank.
• 1:23:44
  SPEAKER_01: This is why I don't like rapid flying.
• 1:23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_00: while you think I'll give you one.
• 1:23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Of mine.
• 1:23:53
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't read it in a while, actually, but I think I was about 16 or 17.
• 1:23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And my father sent me The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And...
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a rereader of books, but I reread that book, gosh, several times.
• 1:24:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was a great book to reread in different stages of life,
• 1:24:15
  SPEAKER_00: and especially when you're about to cross a threshold in life or make a change.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good book to read.
• 1:24:23
  SPEAKER_01: I will say my husband did once give me a copy.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was a beautiful leather bound copy of Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman.
• 1:24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I absolutely love Alice Hoffman.
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_01: She's one of my favorite writers.
• 1:24:37
  SPEAKER_01: She's influenced me in so many ways in terms of understanding writing itself
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_01: and understanding language and understanding folklore and narrative.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I will say Practical Magic.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry it took me so long to come up with one.
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, and the movie is coming out.
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't wait.
• 1:24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I hope they do it justice returning to it.
• 1:25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, third one.
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Who is your favorite fairy tale author?
• 1:25:06
  SPEAKER_00: So a traditional author?
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_01: Could be a traditional, whatever you want.
• 1:25:10
  SPEAKER_01: I will say,
• 1:25:11
  SPEAKER_01: I really love,
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_01: and this is a controversial choice,
• 1:25:15
  SPEAKER_01: but I really love Hans Christian Andersen, who is a literary fairy tale writer.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I have so many friends who think that he is just so tragic.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:25:25
  SPEAKER_01: And his stories and he describes suffering in so many terrible ways.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I love the emotion beneath his stories and I love the tragedies that he explores
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_01: and they move me.
• 1:25:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're beautifully written.
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll say Hans Christian Andersen.
• 1:25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a fairy tale that's very popular and there are many of it,
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_00: but you don't think you don't care for it.
• 1:25:52
  SPEAKER_01: I do not think I've met a fairy tale that I don't like.
• 1:25:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I've come across one where I would say I don't like a particular fairy tale.
• 1:26:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're like all fairy tales are welcome.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_01: I love all of those fairy tales.
• 1:26:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't think I've met one that I don't enjoy.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a fair point.
• 1:26:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:26:38
  SPEAKER_00: OK, now last one.
• 1:26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a repeat question.
• 1:26:42
  SPEAKER_00: But since our last conversation, maybe your thoughts on this have changed or not.
• 1:26:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, again, romancing the threshold.
• 1:26:53
  SPEAKER_00: What comes to mind for you now?
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I love the title of your podcast and I love thresholds and liminal spaces.
• 1:27:01
  SPEAKER_01: And these are the things that I talk about in my classes all the time.
• 1:27:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think the thing that comes to my mind right now is the threshold guide
• 1:27:10
  SPEAKER_01: because I've I've recently taken the quiz that is on your website and I walked
• 1:27:16
  SPEAKER_01: through the guided meditation with you to find my threshold guide.
• 1:27:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the idea of having a guide at the threshold comes to my mind now.
• 1:27:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think I've always thought about those liminal spaces as spaces that we cross more
• 1:27:35
  SPEAKER_01: or less independently.
• 1:27:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I like the idea of there being a guide who will need us.
• 1:27:41
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly where we are and show us the way through.
• 1:27:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that really your podcast is in many ways acting as a guide for
• 1:27:51
  SPEAKER_01: so many people who are trying to navigate those thresholds that they encounter
• 1:27:55
  SPEAKER_01: in their lives.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 1:27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you.
• 1:28:02
  SPEAKER_00: I am myself in a massive threshold and I do think there are many dwellers at
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_00: the threshold, beings we meet today.
• 1:28:11
  SPEAKER_00: At the threshold, at different stages of life, different thresholds.
• 1:28:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea of the threshold lover is,
• 1:28:20
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like it's a guy that helps us want to cross the threshold.
• 1:28:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, because we're supposed to cross a threshold.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're not supposed to stay there.
• 1:28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes we stay there, we're kind of frozen for whatever reason.
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then we kind of sort of are dragged across the threshold, kicking and screaming.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_00: But it is nice to know that we can also meet through stories or however they show up
• 1:28:48
  SPEAKER_00: in our lives,
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_00: a guide that really awakens our appetite, our hunger to cross it, to face it, to...
• 1:28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I love the way you personified those different guides.
• 1:29:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that's something that's very comforting.
• 1:29:04
  SPEAKER_01: It makes us feel less alone as we're encountering change.
• 1:29:09
  SPEAKER_01: I just think it's a really beautiful thing.
• 1:29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I now get to sort of live with all eight of them.
• 1:29:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are more.
• 1:29:18
  SPEAKER_00: More probably will be coming, but for now it's eight.
• 1:29:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like, oh, I get to live with these eight residential lovers.
• 1:29:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a busy house inside my head.
• 1:29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Kelly, thank you so much for being my return champion.
• 1:29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, thank you for having me.
• 1:29:36
  SPEAKER_01: I always love talking with you and I love to listen to
• 1:29:39
  SPEAKER_01: the way you interpret fairy tales and folklore and mythology and romance.
• 1:29:44
  SPEAKER_01: You add so much to my understanding of all of these things.
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this in this exploration that you brought to us today about fairy tales
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_00: and folklore, I mean, Really informative.
• 1:29:56
  SPEAKER_00: It gives me a thousand other ideas about ways of seeing
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_00: and perceiving what I'm reading and even the fairy tales that I've always loved.
• 1:30:06
  SPEAKER_01: You can see them in so many different ways.
• 1:30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much.
• 1:30:11
  SPEAKER_00: And lucky students you have to have you as their professor.
• 1:30:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm the lucky one.
• 1:30:18
  SPEAKER_01: They're so much fun to have in class.
• 1:30:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I love to hear their insight into the fairy tales that we're reading.
• 1:30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Before you go, I have a question for you.
• 1:30:30
  SPEAKER_00: What was your favorite fairy tale?
• 1:30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not the one you think you should say.
• 1:30:34
  SPEAKER_00: The one you made someone read to you again and again.
• 1:30:38
  SPEAKER_00: The one whose pictures you can still see in your mind.
• 1:30:43
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the second half of it.
• 1:30:45
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think that story, that fairy tale says about you, about your life?
• 1:30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Kelly also said something near the end of the interview that has inspired me
• 1:30:57
  SPEAKER_00: to start asking this question too.
• 1:31:00
  SPEAKER_00: She said she always asks people their favorite fairy tale and
• 1:31:04
  SPEAKER_00: then she uses what she knows about that tale to understand the person
• 1:31:09
  SPEAKER_00: a little better.
• 1:31:11
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me yours, leave it in the comments, or write to me.
• 1:31:15
  SPEAKER_00: I love reading your comments.
• 1:31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Kelly also mentioned something else at the close.
• 1:31:21
  SPEAKER_00: She said she's taken the Threshold Lover Quiz and that what came to mind for her now
• 1:31:26
  SPEAKER_00: when she hears Romancing the Threshold is the idea of a guide,
• 1:31:32
  SPEAKER_00: something that meets you exactly where you are and shows you the way through.
• 1:31:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's the quiz.
• 1:31:38
  SPEAKER_00: There are eight threshold lovers and one of them is already walking
• 1:31:42
  SPEAKER_01: with you.
• 1:31:44
  SPEAKER_00: The link is in the show notes.
• 1:31:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it only takes three minutes and you get to find out who is your threshold lover.
• 1:31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I have another ask for you.
• 1:31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Pass this episode to the person that came to mind when you were listening.
• 1:32:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's usually one.
• 1:32:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how this show travels.
• 1:32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Not through the algorithm, but through one person handing it to another.
• 1:32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Also, you can follow the show wherever you're listening so that
• 1:32:14
  SPEAKER_00: the next episode just lands in your feed on the day it drops.
• 1:32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, if you have a minute, please leave a review.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_00: It helps us immensely and it helps other people also find the podcast.
• 1:32:28
  SPEAKER_00: And remember,
• 1:32:29
  SPEAKER_00: whether the crossing is your own or one that we're all making together,
• 1:32:34
  SPEAKER_00: we don't have to white-knuckle our way through it.
• 1:32:38
  SPEAKER_00: We can meet change with the curiosity of lovers.
• 1:32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Vanessa Couto.
• 1:32:43
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Romancing the Threshold, and I'll see you at the next crossing.